Theme Parks of the UAE

SEGA Republic

Dubai Mall is your average shopping mall. Except it has 1200 shops. And an aquarium. And an ice rink. And an incredibly complete, real diplodocus skeleton. And a miniature amusement park. If you’ve ever been to Bluewater, it has that same two-short-sides-one-curved-side layout, except it’s across four stories instead of two, and has an extra parade of shops running down the middle. It’s the biggest mall in the world in terms of area, although not by shop space – because of all the other stuff to keep you occupied. SEGA Republic is barely big enough to be classed an amusement park; it’s predominantly a video arcade anyway, but it certainly makes the most of its space.

​For the family there’s a small drop ride, a high ropes course and some kind of virtual reality laser tag game. The thrills are provided by a miniature Top Spin and an Afterburner-style swinging ride. There's a pair of huge enclosed slides which start right at the top of the four-story arena and snake their way down to the ground (we couldn’t resist having a go). The highlight though is a mainly-enclosed Gerstlauer spinning coaster called Spin Gear. It seems a little odd to have the biggest (and most expensive to construct) attraction mainly hidden from customers, but it meant that there was no queue and we were quickly onboard and heading up a surprisingly long lift hill. At the apex, the car curves outside and into the amusement park briefly, through some standard Wild Mouse turns, before plunging into a dark room. I had little idea what the layout was like, and I wasn’t expecting much since mall coasters are usually tiny, but the course is a decent length. It felt like there were three downhill sections, each banking from side to side and getting progressively faster. Unsurprisingly it’s nothing to write home about, but it’s a fun, quick ride. It seems like a great model for other malls to follow, diversifying from pure retail, but realistically it’s probably uneconomic unless the mall is very, very busy most of the time and almost a tourist attraction in its own right. However much you dislike shopping, the Dubai Mall is worth a visit: we spent the entire afternoon and into the evening there, ending with catching the stunning fountain show in front of the Burj Khalifa and gorging on Shake Shack.

Spin Gear emerges from its building with some snappy hairpin turns

IMG Worlds of Adventure

Back in the mid-noughties, Dubai was finding its feet as the new international resort destination, and a number of ambitious theme park projects began to emerge. As the global financial crisis hit these were almost all canned (only Ferrari World actually opened in this period, since Abu Dhabi was less financially crippled than Dubai). Most of the projects stayed dead, but a few were revived and some new were conceived, and almost a decade later they’re finally beginning to open. IMG is the first, having opened in September, and there is no shortage of ambition. This is not the well-known talent agency IMG who represent a number of elite athletes, but rather the UAE-based Ilyas & Mustafa Galadari Group, who have built the largest indoor theme park in the world. Though it must be admitted that there actually aren’t very many indoor theme parks, IMG is still very impressive. The park has acquired the rights to some substantial intellectual property, as well using a few ‘original’ themes across four distinct lands.

IMG Boulevard and Nickolodeon

IMG Boulevard is advertised as being an 'original concept' zone, but it's ultimately just the entrance, akin to Main Street USA in the Disney Parks. There is one attraction, a Haunted House, which we didn't do on account of one of us being too scared. The rest of the area is made up of restaurants and gift shops. Nickolodeon is the first of the three true 'Epic Zones', and understandably in an area themed to a children’s’ television channel, most of the rides are aimed at the younger kids, with Ben 10, Adventure Time and LazyTown all featuring. The one thrill ride is Mojo Jojo’s Rampage, a Zamperla Air Race themed to the PowerPuff Girls.

This is the more impressive of the two IPs considering how current it is; Disney are still struggling to use a lot of the Marvel characters in their parks because of old deals struck with Universal before they acquired the comic book giant. I guess no one at the top saw IMG as a threat and weren’t going to turn down revenue which if nothing else would promote the brand across the globe. The rides are also based on the comic books themselves, not the films, so the likenesses of the big-name Hollywood actors are never used. The coverage is thorough: Spiderman, Thor, Hulk and the Avengers as a whole each get their own ride. Theming as always in comic book areas is enthusiastic but dubious; two-dimensional cut outs are the best way to represent two-dimensional characters, but will always look a little cheap. The headline attraction in the area is Spiderman: Doc Ock’s Revenge, a Mack spinning coaster. Like Spin Gear, it is mainly contained within its own building, with little visible for those not on the ride. There’s no overt storyline, but there’s enough scenery to convince you that you’re in the midst of a battle between two superheroes. It’s not the best spinning coaster out there, but it is a decent family coaster.

The standout Marvel ride is Avengers: Battle of Ultron, a tracked motion simulator, very much like Spiderman and Transformers at Universal. Those rides are phenomenal; they rely on seamlessly blending gigantic 3D screens with physical scenery as you pass through on a motion platform on a track. They have been copied frequently, but never with the same level of success. Avengers is still not quite on the same level, but comes pretty close. It’s a predictable romp through a large city, things exploding as you go, but the projections are pretty good and the scenery is immersive. Hulk: Epsilon Base, a 4D cinema, and Thor Thunder Spin, a standard Topspin ride, make up the remaining attractions in the area.

Since the rides in Marvel are mainly simulators and an indoor roller coaster, this small section of Doc Ock's track is all that's visible

Lost Valley - Dinosaur Adventure

The park’s signature attraction, and the only ride to emerge into the desert, is Velociraptor, a Mack megacoaster. These new ultra-smooth launch coasters have been a hit with enthusiasts and parks alike; they’re comfortable, reliable, look impressive and are suitable for even younger kids. But I have two issues: the first is that there are now seven of them, but six have exactly the same layout. This isn’t really a problem per se, as most people who go on one of them won’t have been on any of the others, but it shows a lack of enthusiasm on the park’s part. The second is that they are forceless and ultimately quite uninteresting. The launches are weak, there’s little airtime and few powerful positive g-forces. The ride is not helped by its tepid theming, it feels like an early Lara Croft video game: everything kind of looks like a jungle temple, but it’s very blocky and empty. There’s a dinosaur skull outside which the train launches through and not much else. It really isn’t a bad ride, but if you’re going to spend tens of millions on a flagship coaster there are a lot of better options.

Velociraptor's impressive but fairly bland layout by night

The other significant coaster, Predator, is also in the dinosaur-themed area, and has an even more vague theme. There’s quite a cool giant crocodile animatronic in the water, but nothing else really. The ride is a Gerstlauer Eurofighter with a beyond-vertical drop, and is an exact clone of Rage at Adventure Island in Essex. It’s not a bad ride, but, as with Velociraptor, you feel they could’ve been a little more ambitious with the layout. This was also the worst example of inept operations: they were running one 8-seat train on a ride which can handle four of them. Running one train on most coasters is a bit annoying on busy days and absolutely understandable on quiet days, but Eurofighters have tiny single-car vehicles and are designed to run lots of them continuously. It meant we spent literally two hours in a queue which should’ve taken no more than 30 minutes. It’s stupid of the park; the more time we spend out of the queues, the more likely it is that we’ll spend money (and Lydia wanted to buy a lot of Nickelodeon stuff). Forbidden Territory is the final major ride in Lost Valley, and is a motion vehicle-type ride through a plastic jungle of animatronic dinosaurs, mechanically similar to the Indiana Jones rides at Disney in California and Tokyo. It doesn’t do as well as Avengers does in replicating its inspiration, mainly because the animatronics are pretty crude, but it’s a long ride with some creative use of the screens at the end in an encounter with a T-Rex.

Predator is a lot of fun, but short and with very little theming

The obvious issue with indoor parks is that they can’t expand without adding more onto the building, and I didn’t get a good enough look at whether there were any clearly earmarked plots for future additions. It will be interesting to see how the park goes about expanding and improving; they’ve got a lot of rides already, but many of them are not the most exciting. Corners seem to have been cut in a few places, but generally there’s a high standard of rides and theming. The operations were the real negative, but I imagine these will improve in the coming months as the staff get used to running the rides.

Ferrari World Abu Dhabi

Last on the list but first on the trip was Ferrari World; the first major amusement park the in UAE, opening in 2010. Like IMG it’s entirely indoors, with the exception of the roller coasters which begin inside with most of their layouts in the desert outside. The building is an incredible dome-like structure drawn into a triangle by three huge forked tails, all painted bright red of course. It’s a lot smaller than IMG inside, but is still a mightily impressive bit of engineering.

The stunning building is intended to follow the design principles of Ferrari's supercars

Food

Having spent the morning at the stunning Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, we arrived at midday and ready for feeding. Unsurprisingly all of the restaurants have an Italian theme, and we opted for a middle-of-the-road sit-down fast food place. Whilst we did have the traditional theme park gross giant pizza slice, we also had a really good prawn pasta cooked from scratch in front of us. This might be tricky to do efficiently when the park is busier, but it was great to see and we didn’t even pay through our noses for it. There’s a slightly more upmarket sit down restaurant, as well as a couple of more casual fast food places, plus the park itself is attached to a mall, so there’s plenty of choice outside.

Flying Aces

The park’s latest coaster is Flying Aces; one of the few rides to depart from the automotive theme. Instead it’s themed to an Italian First World War fighter squadron, led by Francesco Barraca, whose plane was adorned with the image of a prancing horse. This icon of course eventually became Ferrari’s legendary logo. The theming is far beyond anything else in the park; you are taken through the trenches of the war and into an underground bunker, where the story of the flying aces is told (over and over and over again) on big screens. You emerge into a hangar which serves as the ride’s station and board the bright yellow biplane-styled trains.The ride is a bit of mashup in terms of model, it’s built by Intamin and uses wing trains; four-in-a-row seating where the outer seats hang just off the track. This is the second use of these trains, the first being on Skyrush at Hersheypark, which is one of the very best coasters I’ve been on due to its out-of-this-world airtime. However, because the trains hold you in with only a lap bar, every moment of air squeezes your upper legs, leading to it being nicknamed “ThighCrush”. This pain is completely non-existent on Flying Aces however, which is a hugely welcome upgrade.

The ride starts with a rapid and steep cable lift (in fact they claim it’s the fastest cable lift hill in the world, possibly the lamest record to hold) to a height of 206 ft, which actually doesn’t feel anywhere near that tall. The first drop is powerful, getting right down to ground level in a little ravine, hitting 75 mph. You then enter a bizarre non-inverting loop, starting like a regular loop but just as the train begins to invert it twists 180 degrees to take the top of the loop on the outside, and then back around again as you fall back to earth. There’s a little overbanked curve before a tiny and powerful bunny hop – the best moment of airtime on the ride. After another turnaround there are two consecutive airtime hills, which are frankly fairly low on air, before the train heads into a low banked finale, interspersed with a corkscrew inversion, quite atypical on a rides like this which usually focus on big hills and high speeds.

Flying Aces' second half - the train travels through a corkscrew, an unusal but welcome addition on a hypercoaster

During construction, the big question was whether it would top its older sister Skyrush, and in my opinion it’s a straightforward no. Breaking it down it seems like it has a good chance: the drop is better, the non-inverting loop is fantastic, the corkscrew is interesting and well placed, it’s significantly longer (and doesn’t really peter out at the end despite what videos suggest) and even has a couple of moments of airtime. But ultimately it’s just not as fun as Skyrush; none of it is as extreme and although it has great variety it never delivers anything spectacular. A big trend in the amusement industry these days is the multifaceted coaster, cramming in all sorts of elements to avoid being a one-trick pony. Some parks forget however that if you don’t do anything particularly well then you’re left with an unmemorable ride. Maybe it’s a little harsh as Flying Aces is still a great coaster, but the airtime is scarce (which may be why your legs don’t get squeezed as much) and you just don’t get off the ride speechless like with Skyrush.

Formula Rossa

Formula Rossa is a very ‘UAE’ coaster. By that I mean it’s gratuitously gigantic. It is to speed what the Burj Khalifa is to height; at 149 mph it’s the fastest roller coaster in the world. Not only is it the fastest, it also broke the record by the largest margin ever, being 21 mph faster than Six Flags Great Adventure’s Kingda Ka. It’s so fast that you have to wear goggles to defend from rogue insects and sand. The ride is themed to Formula 1 (literally meaning Formula Red in Italian), but not in much more than that the car looks like an F1 car.Like the majority of ultra-fast roller coasters, it doesn’t have a traditional chain lift, but rather an explosive launch. Whilst it has a considerable speed margin on every other coaster in the world, it isn’t the fastest accelerating coaster out there; meaning it takes relatively longer to get to its top speed than a few other, slower rides do (although it’s pretty high up that list as well). As a reference, it gets to 149 mph in 4 seconds, Kingda Ka gets to 128 in 3.5 (making it slightly slower), Stealth at Thorpe Park gets to 80 in 1.9 and Japan’s Dodonpa takes the record by getting to 107 in an absurd 1.8. For this reason, I was expecting a strong launch without it being overwhelming – just like Kingda Ka. I haven’t done Dodonpa yet, and the best launch I had done until this point was Stealth, which ranks second* worldwide in terms of acceleration.

But all of the nonsense in the above paragraph was dismissed in approximately 4 seconds in what is by far the most extreme element I’ve ever done on a roller coaster. The launch feels like it’s in three stages: the initial acceleration is a standard modern coaster launch, taking you up to around 60 mph. Then you push through to a snappy 100 mph seemingly accelerating even more rapidly, then finally you pass every other ride ever built through to almost 150 mph in what feels mind-blowingly rapid. It’s just such a long launch track that the stomach-turning feeling is sustained and even growing for absolutely ages. The train is then catapulted over a 170 ft crest – tall by most rides’ standards – but at this speed the train could climb well over 500 ft if needed, and so the train is heavily braked to avoid being launched into outer space. Still, you’re travelling at probably 80 mph at this point. Whilst most speed monsters come to an abrupt end soon after the launch, Formula Rossa has two kilometres of track and so is actually the seventh longest roller coaster on the planet. It’s effectively a double figure eight with a few bunny hops at the end, in videos the remainder of the circuit looks a little bland, but the speed is so great that there is significant sustained positive g-force through the whole course. I thought I would enjoy the ride, but my expectations were completely blown away and it sits right near the top of the pile of coasters that I’ve done at number four, behind El Toro, Skyrush and Goliath (Walibi Holland).

It's really, really fast

Other rides

The only other roller coaster is a family launched coaster called Gran Fiorano Challenge, a duelling coaster from Maurer featuring no fewer than four magnetic launches on each side of the track. Despite being literally one quarter of the speed of Formula Rossa, it’s actually really good fun. In an attempt to mimic real driving, the track barely banks at all, and so when you go around corners you’re pushed to the side by some powerful laterals. On paper Ferrari is fantastic IP to use for a theme park: it’s synonymous with excellence and luxury, it has a rich history, there are very few negative connotations associated with it (unlike Disney which for many embodies the fake, plastic, American-imperialistic world we live in) and there’s the obvious thrill seeking element that links supercars and Formula 1 with amusement rides. The Yas Marina F1 Circuit is also right next door. In reality however, past the coasters the ideas run pretty flat. There’s Speed of Magic, another Spiderman-style motion-simulator ride, but it’s significantly worse. The projections are poor, and even worse is the scenery. The 3D hurt my head, the car was jerky and the plot line was terrible.

There’s a flying simulator with the same physical setup as Disney’s Soarin’ rides, taking you over the mountains and towns of Italy. It’s fine but uninteresting, just as Soarin’ is. Yet another simulator takes you on a test drive in an F1 car alongside a budding Ferrari engineer who keeps dropping all of his papers (yes it makes as little sense as it sounds), and throws in some very poor splices of Seb Vettel sitting in the car next to you pretending to be part of the same video. Finally, there’s an upcharge driving simulator which requires booking a timed slot, and when we arrived about two hours after opening all the spaces were already filled. Dotted around are a few simple rides; teacups, a car ride around a model Italy, some junior go-karts and some play areas for kids.

Flying Aces' unusual non-inverting loops - one its best elements

One major irritant was the insistence on a ‘maintenance break’ every half hour or so on both of the big coasters. Whether we just got unlucky with timing, or whether they are perpetual throughout the day I don’t know, and in such harsh climate they may simply be necessary to keep the rides from breaking down, but they were annoying nonetheless, especially with no indication of when operations would resume.Overall the trio of coasters is excellent; the two Intamins make the trip worthwhile on their own, but the other rides are lacking in quantity and quality. However, the park seems keen to continually improve; there were a few particular poorly-regarded rides when the park opened which have now been torn out, and two new coasters are on the way. Turbo Track has just opened (April 2017), it blasts riders out of the building at 64 mph and up a 210 ft twisted vertical spike before falling back along the same track to the station. It’s slightly odd that the park didn’t opt for a bigger version, with the money they have they could’ve broken the world height record, but it looks impressive nonetheless. The other is a very interesting ‘SFX Coaster’, which will have a number of trick elements such as tilting, dropping and sliding elements of track, as well as a few inversions. This ride has been physically complete for a while, concealed inside its own building, but has not yet opened.

The external portion of the yet-to-open, intriguing SFX coaster

UAE Overall

There’s no doubt that operations need drastic improvement across the board, and with regards to quality corners cannot be cut if they want to compete with the best of Orlando, California and Germany, but the future is very much bright for the amusement industry in UAE. The movie-themed Motiongate has just opened (although not yet all of its major rides), along with LEGOLAND Dubai and a Bollywood-themed park, all three part of the Dubai Parks and Resorts project. The World’s largest observation wheel is under construction, IMG is already looking to add a second park and even Six Flags have committed to opening one of their trademark thrill parks by 2020. It remains to be seen of course what kind of quality these new parks will be however, and whether they will be able to remain open in the coming decades.

Parks

Ferrari World: 7/10

SEGA Republic: 4/10 (size-adjusted to a 6/10)

IMG Worlds of Adventure: 5/10

Rides

Formula Rossa: 10/10

Flying Aces: 9/10

Avengers: 8/10

Velociraptor: 7/10

Predator: 4/10 (-2 for shocking operations)

Spin Gear: 4/10

*There are a few new coasters built by the same company as Dodonpa without accurate stats published which are likely a little bit more rapid than Stealth